MIGRATION OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 67 



industries. Taking as illustrations one or two of the most 

 important of the other industries, it would appear that 

 roughly the proportion of wages to total value of product 

 is in iron mining about 60 per cent., in the manufacture 

 of pig iron nearly 25 per cent., and in obtaining steel from 

 pig iron about 15 per cent. In shipbuilding the propor- 

 tion of wages to total expenditure is about 40 per cent., 

 and in the coal industry about 55 per cent. In the cotton 

 industry the percentage which labour bears to the total 

 value of the product is put at about 27*8 per cent. 



With regard to the share of the produce taken by the 

 agricultural labourer, the total amount for the United 

 Kingdom has been variously estimated. Major Craigie 

 puts it (in the paper already referred to) at 50,000,000, 

 but Mr. Elliott, in his report to the Board of Trade, thinks 

 that it cannot be placed lower than 55,000,000 to 

 56,000,000. If we take the gross annual value of the farm 

 produce of the United Kingdom at the amount estimated 

 by Mr. James Howard, viz., 207,000,000, it will be seen 

 that we arrive at practically the same conclusion as was 

 reached by another set of figures, i.e., that the labourer's 

 share is rather more than one-fourth of the produce. 



Another natural cause, so to speak, which is assigned 

 for the decrease of agricultural labourers is that fewer of 

 them are needed under the altered circumstances of farm- 

 ing. The chief of these circumstances are the increased 

 use of machinery and the decrease of arable land. 



No doubt in agriculture, as in all other industries, 

 manual labour has been to some extent displaced by 

 machinery, though I think it must be added that agri- 

 culture differs from other industries in the extent to which 

 the use of machinery increases the output. Speaking 

 broadly, it might be true to say that in agriculture the use 

 of machinery tends rather to cheapen production than to 

 increase it. 



The returns of the census of 1881 gave some indication 

 of the extended use of machinery in the fact that " the 



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